The Hero Of Canton

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While we're not the hero of THE story, it would be cool being the hero of A story / planet / system. Sure, we can become allied and be swooned over by a faction's representative, but I'm talking real fame. The same dude who runs out of fuel time and again always promises to write a song in my honor, yet nobody is ever singing my song when I pull into a starport. I think it's time to change that!

Specifically, it would be nice to have an entry in the station service menu that lists the Top 5 'Heroic' CMDRs. Heroic is relative, so I guess this would be measured based on reputation. Frontier would have to internally track a reputation score that goes above "Allied" (allied + n), and it probably should slowly decay over a long period of time to allow others to get their own names on the "Wall of Fame" after I leave that particular system. I don't think this would be that hard to do from a programming perspective.

Some people don't care about glory and fame, but others do. Heck, I once went on a murder spree (NPCs) just to get my name on the top of the Most Wanted list! Why is it we reward bad behavior and not good behavior? If I'm instrumental in a system's well-being due to various positive BGS influences, then that should be songworthy and newsworthy!

He robbed from the rich and he gave to the poor.
Stood up to the man and he gave him what for.
Our love for him now, ain't hard to explain,
The hero of Canton, the man they call Jayne Old Duck!

I agree.
Adding not only lists for bounties but also for commodities delivered, bounties handed in,
passengers delivered & rescued etc. would make it more transparent who is doing what
in starports and make it a bit more alive.
Perhaps even something like the danger rating of Inara, with attacks on CMDRs.

That would be nice, I'd rather see that reflected in some tangible stuff as well, like reduced repair costs, cheaper restock prices. It's all peanuts anyway but becoming allied should have benefits other than just better missions.

There once was a man from Canton
Who went after baddies for fun
He was just an Old Duck
But he didn't give a hoot
"Your <alternative name for a donkey and posteriour> is grass and I'm a lawnmower, son."

Systems regularly go into various states which benefit from player actions (pirate activity, war, outreak, famine, etc) and it'd be fairly simple to add an entry into the system newsfeed saying something like "CMDR [name] valiantly fought alongside other members of [faction]" or "CMDR [name] bravely stood against the criminal manace plaguing our system" etc.

Wouldn't even need to be a proper "top 5 CMDRs", like we have for bounties.
Just give every CMDR who helps with something a mention in the system newsfeed.

I suppose the only possible problem might be when a system state creates a "gold-rush" and there's a gazillion CMDRs "helping" by blowing up skimmers or doing surface-scan missions or whatever.
In that situation, FDev would need to make sure than adding thousands of entries to the newsfeed every day didn't cause some kind of meltdown.

Alternatively, perhaps, maybe the best solution would be to create some kind of discreet "league table" and then ONLY publish details of whichever CMDR was currently top of the league?
So, for example, the newsfeed would just show a message saying something like "CMDR [name] is currently proving to be our most valuable ally during this time of [system state]".

I noticed we (technically) have a tiny nucleus in that respect : the ominous "PilotsFederation" Reputation.

I remember being allied with the old "The Pilots Federation" Faction in ShinDez.
Last week, I handed in a few AX Combat Bonds for the Pilots Federation around Maia/Palin and received an oddball "Thanks to your continued services, you're now considered Friendly by the PilotsFederation".

Left me scratching my head a little, since that's clearly a different entity than the previous Faction I was already 100% Allied with since years.

I've been wondering what "perks" would come along being Allied with that new (old? / replacement?) "PilotsFederation" entity.

For the time being, I simply assume there are none. No songs to be written, no decals, no benefits or advantage of whatever type. Noone to remember, no heroes - not even local ones.
Indeed would be neat if that was different - and any such mechanic also used for local area (System/Faction/Power/SuperPower-based) "heroes".

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I think significant player actions simply being recognised, good or bad, would be a good thing. Nothing major, just a bit of flavour when dealing with factions, NPC's etc. perhaps a Pirate might realise just who they've just accosted, based on your prior actions against pirates, and flee. Despite you being in an unarmed Type 7 at the moment of the current encounter. How about NPC's calling for help before the notorious Pirate commander actually interdicts them, as they'd seen you on their scanner? Or ships travelling with protection as dread commander Bob has been sighted locally...

There's a lot of flavour that could be added to the game by recognising player actions - it's all logged after all these days isn't it? Some basic profiling software on FDevs side, some custom text, and perhaps voice, options all adds to the immersion. I could get behing an entire update that just added such flavour to the game and NPC / Player interactions.

I think significant player actions simply being recognised, good or bad, would be a good thing. Nothing major, just a bit of flavour when dealing with factions, NPC's etc. perhaps a Pirate might realise just who they've just accosted, based on your prior actions against pirates, and flee. Despite you being in an unarmed Type 7 at the moment of the current encounter. How about NPC's calling for help before the notorious Pirate commander actually interdicts them, as they'd seen you on their scanner? Or ships travelling with protection as dread commander Bob has been sighted locally...

I mean, you show up in your Corvette o' Doom and systematically melt everything from Anacondas and Clippers to FGSs and FdLs and pick their bones for mat's but you still get numpties in Cobras flying up to you to see if you "have any tasty cargo".
Seriously?
Were you paying any attention to the events of the last few minutes?
I scanned you when I arrived so I know you were here.
Do you really think this is going to go well for you?

Course, the problem is how to improve this without making things like RES's and CNBs downright annoying.

We've all (probably) done POI-based massacre missions where you show up at the POI, open fire on one ship and the rest take off like scalded cats.
You're never at any particular risk during those missions but you can only ever hope to explode 3 or 4 ships (out of a dozen or so) at each POI before the rest jump out and then you have to go and look for another POI.
That's just tedious.

My favourite types of FPS (or, technically, third-person shooter) are the Splinter-Cell style games, where you need to creep around to get your victim alone, or lure them into a position where they're on their own.
If you don't, the alarm will go up and the other characters will either flee or attack you, depending on the situation.

I wonder if it'd be possible to work something a bit like that into ED?

Pirates already attack mining ships in a RES, or freighters in CNBs so there are already potential conflicts between factions in those places.
Maybe it could be set up so that attacking one ship from X faction would lead to other ships from X faction either fleeing or joining in to attack you?
Conversely, if ships from X faction have attacked ships from Y faction and then you attack a ship from X faction, maybe ships from Y faction will join in to defend you?

Equally, maybe if you attack a bunch of ships from X faction then other ships from X faction would steer clear of you?
Maybe NPC behaviour could be modified so that if you attack a ship from X faction, other ships from X faction will, at least, try to scan you and if they succeed it'll influence their subsequent behaviour?

I dunno.
Maybe FDev figure it's not worth developing NPC behaviour like this because a player will always be able to jump out and then jump back in if things get too "messy"?
Thing is, adding more dynamic behaviour would probably encourage experienced players to stick around just to see how much trouble they could stir up while newbies could still jump out when/if things get too hot for them.

I think significant player actions simply being recognised, good or bad, would be a good thing. Nothing major, just a bit of flavour when dealing with factions, NPC's etc. perhaps a Pirate might realise just who they've just accosted, based on your prior actions against pirates, and flee. Despite you being in an unarmed Type 7 at the moment of the current encounter. How about NPC's calling for help before the notorious Pirate commander actually interdicts them, as they'd seen you on their scanner? Or ships travelling with protection as dread commander Bob has been sighted locally...

There's a lot of flavour that could be added to the game by recognising player actions - it's all logged after all these days isn't it? Some basic profiling software on FDevs side, some custom text, and perhaps voice, options all adds to the immersion. I could get behing an entire update that just added such flavour to the game and NPC / Player interactions.

While I stick with my desire to have a "Hall Of Fame" list limited to the top five contributors, I'm totally cool with what you suggest as well. My idea spurs competition and a unique "I truly am the hero of this system!" but there should be some change in NPC behavior based on this. I'd really like a home system to feel more like HOME, especially if I pick some remote system where my singular actions really matter. Right now all systems feel the same, regardless how much of my time, energy, and credits I invest in a single system.

See, I think that could be something of a "double-edged sword", which'd actually be good for gameplay.

Whatever's happening in a system, be it a war, outbreak or whatever, there's a good chance that somebody's doing stuff to provoke it and news reports of CMDRs doing things (good and bad) related to that would be a way of letting everybody know what various people were up to.